Second leg of St. Louis stadium's Ballpark Village breaks ground

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Dive Brief:

Contractors have broken ground on the $260 million, second phase of Ballpark Village, an entertainment hub and mixed-use complex next door to the St. Louis Cardinals' Busch Stadium in downtown St. Louis, Missouri, according to Fox 2 Now.

The first project of the 550,000-square-foot expansion, which dwarfs the 100,000-square-foot first phase, is a $65 million Live! by Loews hotel, which will create a new dining and entertainment district across the street from the stadium. The complex will feature hundreds of guestrooms, meeting and event space, outdoor amenity areas and first-floor dining and entertainment venues. The hotel, a partnership between the Cardinals, developer The Cordish Companies and Loews, will employ a 49% minority workforce.

The second phase of Ballpark Village will also include a 29-story, 230-foot-tall luxury apartment tower from which residents will have views into Busch Stadium and of the Gateway Arch; a Class A office building with street-level retail and dining; and a two-story marketplace. The office building will be the first new construction of its kind since 1989.

Dive Insight:

Cordish has a hand in other entertainment and mixed-use projects, some part of major sports venues and others adjacent to them.

The company is part of a $2.5 billion mixed-use district along the St. Johns River in Jacksonville, Florida, a project that developers will position between the river and the Jacksonville Jaguars' stadium. The more than 4-million-square-foot complex will feature hotel, convention, residential, retail, entertainment and office space, but Cordish said the entire buildout could take as long as a generation.

Back in November of 2017, Cordish also announced that construction on its $600 million Live! Casino and Hotel Philadelphia development in South Philadelphia was slated to begin in 2018. In January, according to the Philadelphia Business Journal, the company bought a $37 million, 9-acre parcel near the city's major sports venues. Cordish plans to renovate an existing Holiday Inn into a boutique hotel with 200 rooms and is redeveloping a neighboring building into a casino. The development will also include entertainment and dining space.

The Texas Live! complex next to the future, $1.1 billion home of the Texas Rangers, Globe Life Field, will open Aug. 10, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. The $250 million project includes 200,000 square feet of dining and entertainment space and an outdoor pavilion.